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Education  and  Intelligence 


By 

Andrew  Fleming  V^est 

Dean  of  the  Graduate  School 

Princeton  University 


(Reprinted  from  the  New  York  Times  and  Philadelphia 
Public  Ledger  of  September  23,  1911) 


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STATE  HOEIAAL  SCHOOL 

Education  and  Intelligence 

By 

Andrew  Fleming  West 

Dean  of  the  Graduate  School 
Princeton  University 

2  3  3^  7 


LOS  ANGELES 
STy^^TE  NORMAL 


Princeton,  New  Jersey 
October,  1911 


Education  and  Intelligence 

TO  ask  whether  educated  men  should  be  intel- 
ligent may  seem  at  first  sight  merely  a 
flippant  way  of  putting  a  senseless  ques- 
tion. Most  persons,  including  even  those  who  do 
not  think  much  about  such  matters,  believe  that 
in  some  way  or  other  an  increase  of  intelligence 
"Is  the  sure  outcome  of  "getting  an  education."  The 
wise  saying  of  Descartes  that  "the  end  of  educa- 
tion is  the  development  of  intelligence"  is  often 
quoted  to  the  same  effect,  and  it  is  a  common 
opinion  that  a  man  knovv'n  as  "educated"  is  thereby 
certified  to  the  world  as  being  really  intelligent. 

We  somehow  feel  that  this  ought  to  be  so — to 
be  something  to  be  depended  on  in  each  instance — 
and,  in  fact,  it  is  so  in  a  restricted  sense.  As  we 
examine  the  foundations  of  educational  theory  and 
the  results  of  history,  we  are  glad  to  find  ourselves 
justified  in  believing  that  every  diligent  human 
being  of  even  moderate  capacity  becomes  much 
more  intelligent  by  means  of  school  or  college 
training  than  he  would  have  been  or  perhaps  could 
have  been  without  it.  This  v/e  feel  is  as  surely 
true  as  that  the  soil  will  yield  richer  fruit  by  proper 
cultivation.  From  the  truth  at  the  root  of  this 
belief  spring  all  schools,  colleges,  and  institutions 
of  knowledge  the  world  over. 

But  when  we  examine  the  actual  results  of  our 
education,     noting     the     irreconcilable     differences 


Education  and  Intelligence 


among  educated  men  regarding  essential  questions 
and  observing  the  occasional  chaotic  condition  of 
educated  opinion,  we  can  find  no  adequate  explana- 
tion if  we  ignore  the  patent  fact  that  a  good  many 
of  our  so-called  "educated  men"  are  not  really  in- 
telligent— that  they  are  in  fact  men  of  unintelligent 
intellectual  behavior,  some  of  them  superficially 
versed  in  a  number  of  things  somewhat  badly  under- 
stood, some  of  them  sharply  clear  in  a  narrow  way 
— precise  to  the  dot  in  little  things  and  helpless  in 
all  else,  some  only  vaguely  aware  or  wholly  un- 
aware of  the  relative  importance  of  different  topics, 
and  usually  lacking  in  steady,  sensible  judgment. 
And  these  are  but  a  few  instances — for  the  varieties 
of  aberration  from  the  clear  white  light  of  real 
intelligence  are  as  many  as  the  hues  of  the  spec- 
trum. 

I  am  not  referring  here  to  the  natural  tempera- 
mental differences  in  men,  which  education  may 
tone  but  cannot  destroy,  nor  to  the  errors  of  crass 
untrained  ignorance  which,  like  dulness  itself,  seem 
to  be  ineradicable.  But  I  am  thinking  here  of  the 
pall  of  ignorance  that  seems  so  much  darker  when 
it  rests  on  a  man  who  is  supposedly  educated — for 
here  his  ignorance  is  unconscious  and  his  situation 
is  thereby  made  the  more  pathetic.  The  "light" 
that  is  in  him  is  "darkness,"  and  is  all  the  m.ore 
hopeless  because  it  is  supposed  by  its  possessor  to 
be  "light."  In  such  cases  a  man  often  utters  what 
he  thinks,  supposing  it  to  be  what  he  knows.   These 


Education  and  Intelligence 


are  the  "educated  men"  who  do  not  discern  be- 
tween opinion  and  truth,  nor  see  the  relative  im- 
portance of  things,  nor  waken  to  appreciate  what 
things  mean  when  they  happen  outside  the  famiUar 
routine  of  the  ordinary.  I  fully  believe  that  among 
honest  men  of  school  and  college  training  this  is 
the  chief  intellectual  cause  of  discord.  It  is  the 
hardest  obstacle,  excepting  stupid  dulness  and  moral 
baseness,  to  the  progress  of  true  education. 

Do  we  realize  that  in  our  preoccupation  with 
the  machinery  of  education,  our  ready  applause  of 
this  and  that  novelty  and  our  eagerness  to  turn  all 
to  utilitarian  ends,  irrespective  of  the  abiding  in- 
visible values,  we  are  forgetting  the  all-important 
and  controlling  truth  of  the  matter?  This  truth 
is  that  education  is  a  warfare  against  ignorance — 
the  old,  ancient,  inveterate  ignorance  to  which  the 
human  race  is  newly  born  with  every  generation 
that  enters  the  world.  This  is  the  one  ever-old 
and  ever-new  material  to  be  mastered  and  trans- 
formed— the  vast  opaque  resisting  mass  which  must 
first  be  illumined  from  without  and  then  made  lu- 
minous within  by  the  processes  of  education.  It  is 
on  the  existence  of  this  ever-recurring  need  the 
existence  of  institutions  of  knowledge  depends — for 
to  make  the  darkness  light  is  the  one  ceaseless  v/ork 
of  education  and  of  educated  men. 

"Truth  is  one ;  error  is  manifold"  is  the  saying 
credited  to  Pythagoras.  The  unity  of  truth,  its 
close   congruences,   its  luminous  clearness   "having 


Education  and  Intelligence 


no  part  dark,"  its  blending  harmonies,  each  answer- 
ing to  the  other  without  discord — this  has  been  the 
enchanting  vision  which  has  dominated  the  search 
for  knowledge  since  man  began  to  think.  And  we 
cannot  but  believe,  we  must  believe,  we  do  believe 
that  truth  everywhere  is  in  agreement  with  itself. 
It  is  one.  But  manifold  indeed  are  the  varieties 
of  unsound  theory  and  manifold  the  delusions  of 
the  supposedly  but  not  really  educated  from  the 
ancient  fallacy  of  "perpetual  motion"  to  the  vagaries 
of  "child  psychology"  and  the  fads  which  now 
beguile  childhood  with  the  notion  that  organized 
play  is  study.  To  include  these  vagaries  under  one 
class  seems  impossible,  except  by  negation.  We 
can  say  of  them  that  they  are  not  coherent,  not 
consistent,  not  productive  of  intelligence  in  any 
strong  sense.  Their  one  common  negative  trait  is 
detachment  from  appreciation  of  the  important  rela- 
tions of  knowledge.  Perhaps  we  can  turn  this 
around  a  little  and  get  some  sort  of  a  partial  posi- 
tive characterization  by  describing  their  nature  as 
fractional,  dissevering,  centrifugal.  Put  them  all 
together  and  they  will  never  make  a  co-operating 
system.  So  far  as  they  work  at  all,  they  work  best 
singly  and  scatteringly. 

And  yet  they  do  not  work  well.  Take  a  few 
instances.  The  superficially  educated  man  gets  "out 
of  his  depth"  as  soon  as  he  tries  to  think  deeply, 
the  narrowly  trained  man  cannot  see  broadly  be- 
cause he  uses  his  mind  like  an  eye  at  a  keyhole, 


Education  and  Intelligence 


the  mechanically  educated  man  cannot  detect  the 
life  behind  the  mechanism,  the  man  of  commonplace 
cannot  soar  beyond  the  uninterestingly  obvious,  the 
miscellaneously  minded  man  cannot  "collect  his 
thoughts"  and  so  thinks  anything  that  "comes  into 
his  head," — and  none  of  these  is  really  awake  to  the 
essential  humor  and  sadness  of  his  plight.  They 
flock  together  after  their  several  kinds,  forming  the 
divided  and  sometimes  hostile  clans  of  unintelligent 
knowledge.  They  have  missed  the  unity  of  truth 
which  would  have  made  them  one.  Such  "educated 
men"  stand  and  must  stand  below  the  plane  of 
general  balanced  knowledge — for  which  another 
name  is  intelligence.  They  are  the  cause  not  only 
of  sharp  positive  disagreements  in  education  but  at 
times  of  chaotic  confusion,  which  is  even  worse. 

We  have  opened  too  large  a  vista  for  this  brief 
paper.  A  glance  here  and  there  by  way  of  sug- 
gestion is  all  that  can  be  attempted.  In  doing  so 
we  shall  have  to  omit  the  myriad  instances  where 
lack  of  intelligence  is  displayed  in  the  common 
affairs  of  life,  and  to  confine  our  attention  to  the 
supposedly  educated  men  who  are  interested  in 
matters  of  education.  And  even  here  a  very  few 
illustrations  must  suffice. 

Our  system  of  American  education,  if  such  it 
may  be  called,  is  in  certain  important  respects  our 
just  pride.  The  "sense  of  achievement,"  which 
seemed  to  Matthew  Arnold  the  distinctive  note  of 
our   civilization,   is   evident   in   our   schools   of   all 


8  Education  and  Intelligence 

grades  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest.  We  have 
taken  old  traditions  and  shaped  them  anew  to  suit 
our  ever-changing  life.  If  they  did  not  suit,  we 
discarded  them.  Then,  too,  we  have  been  making 
new  traditions — some  of  them  overnight.  That  we 
have  been  free  to  do  so  is  a  matter  of  congratula- 
tion. At  least  we  are  not  "hide-bound,"  so  we 
say.  No  "Procrustean  bed"  (that  overworked 
metaphor!)  for  us.  An  immense  amount  of  work 
has  been  done  with  conscience,  persistence,  and  en- 
thusiasm. Almost  every  new  idea  introduced  has 
been  given  a  trial  and  "worked  for  all  it  was  worth." 
We  have  had  educational  discussion  in  torrents  and 
a  deluge  of  publication.  There  has  been  freedom  to 
say  anything  and  try  anything  that  seemed  worth 
saying  or  trying. 

On  certain  sides  of  this  somewhat  tumultuous 
and  multiform  development  we  have  been  marvel- 
ously  successful,  particularly  in  regard  to  the  labo- 
rious devotion  of  our  teachers  and  the  perfecting  of 
the  externals  of  education.  The  liberal  pecuniary 
provision  made  by  our  several  States  and  cities,  the 
construction  of  our  newer  schoolhouses,  their  equip- 
ment, the  well-planned  playgrounds,  the  arrange- 
ments for  securing  good  air  and  light,  the  general 
sanitation,  the  length  of  school  time,  the  prompt- 
ness and  order  with  which  masses  of  pupils  are 
moved  and  taught,  the  school  clock  that  will  strike 
to  meet  any  programme,  the  devices  for  making 
study  easy  and  pleasant,  the  fire  drill,  the  refresh- 


Education  and  Intelligence 


ment  counters,  manual  training  appliances,  the  clear- 
print  books — these  and  a  thousand  other  big  and 
little  things  subservient  to  education  in  an  external 
way  have  been  perfected  better  in  our  land  than 
elsewhere.  Even  a  "Faculty  Business  Accelerator" 
of  electrical  contrivance  is  announced,  providing  a 
sort  of  self-registering  electric  chair  (ominous 
thought!)  for  each  professor  to  sit  in.  Nevertheless, 
making  every  allowance  for  amusingly  extreme  in- 
stances, we  are  first  in  the  world  in  this  matter  of 
usable  educational  machinery. 

All  this  has  been  done  with  knowledge — quick- 
witted, watchful,  ready  knowledge.  And  we  are 
heartily  thankful  therefor.  But,  in  the  best  sense 
of  the  word,  it  has  not  been  done  with  intelligence, 
which  is  something  more  than  knowledge  and  some- 
thing which  in  its  highest  form  becomes  wisdom.  A 
disproportionate  amount  of  energy  has  been  given 
to  the  machinery.  Due  regard  has  not  been  paid  to 
the  relative  value  of  the  outer  mechanism  of  edu- 
cation when  compared  with  the  invisible  processes 
to  be  used  and  the  invisible  end  to  be  attained  in 
dealing  with  the  pupil's  high  possibilities  as  a  de- 
veloping human  being.  It  is  these  alone  which 
make  any  machinery  useful.  It  is  these  which 
should  dominate  all  scholars,  teachers,  managers, 
and  officers  in  every  stage  of  education  from  the 
timid  beginnings  in  the  primary  school  to  the  end 
of  university  studies. 

No  doubt  this  conviction  is  generally  acknowl- 


10  Education  and  Intelligence 

edged  to  be  true  and  is  often  in  operative  action. 
Yet  what  do  we  actually  find  in  very  many  in- 
stances?— so  many  as  to  indicate  that  the  evil  is 
prevalent  and  threatening.  We  find  the  outer  de- 
vices and  routine  mistaken  for  the  inner  life  of 
education.  What  is  more  tedious  and  dispiriting 
in  such  schools  than  the  mechanized  teaching  which 
ensues,  class  after  class,  section  after  section,  "going 
through"  the  routine  with  the  same  "lock-step,"  and 
the  teacher  expected  and  required  to  deliver  the 
"tale  of  the  bricks"  in  the  shape  of  so  many  pupils 
molded  alike?  It  is  no  wonder  such  uniform  "re- 
sults" are  mediocre.  Not  only  the  individuality  of 
the  student,  but  of  the  teacher,  becomes  subjected 
to  the  "pedagogic  cramp."  It  is  no  wonder  that  a 
majority  of  our  public  school  teachers,  no  matter 
how  promising  at  the  start,  succumb  to  this  routine 
in  a  very  few  years,  and  pass  the  rest  of  their  career 
feeding  material  to  the  machinery.  Three  or  four 
years,  in  the  opinion  of  one  who  was  in  position  to 
know  the  truth  of  the  matter,  (Dr.  William  T. 
Harris,  our  late  Commissioner  of  Education,)  is  the 
time  to  be  allowed  for  the  occurrence  of  this  slump. 
There  is  and  must  be  some  recoil  from  this 
extreme,  so  long  as  teachers  and  scholars  are  human 
beings.  It  seems  to  be  found,  however,  only  in 
resorting  under  the  guise  of  study  to  pleasant  di- 
versions which  are  not  studies  at  all— diverting  the 
pupil,  indeed,  from  lifeless  routine  and  also  diverting 
him  from  intellectual  effort.  Thus  one  extreme  leads 


Education  and  Intelligence  11 

to  another.  This,  inevitable  as  it  is  under  such 
conditions,  is  not  intelligent.  Are  our  American 
boys  and  girls  so  feeble-minded  that  they  cannot 
stand  thorough  training  in  things  of  the  mind? 
Must  a  study  be  "made  easy  to  escape  being  dull"? 
Are  we  unable  to  match  ourselves  with  the  schools 
of  Germany,  France,  England,  and  Scotland?  It 
may  be  humbling  to  our  pride  to  admit  it,  and  yet 
if  we  are  aware  of  the  facts  we  must  know  that 
we  do  not  equal  the  Old  World  schools  in  this 
all-important  matter  of  intelligent  thoroughness. 

From  the  overbelief  in  machinery,  routine  and 
rules  (on  which  visible  helps  all  weak  teachers  lean, 
instead  of  making  the  machinery  their  servant)  it 
is  easy  to  slide  into  acquiescence  with  the  notion 
that  the  visible  side  is  the  chief  thing,  and  that  the 
real  end  of  education  is  "practical,"  "vocational," 
"something  you  can  see  the  use  of"  (a  most  un- 
couth phrase),  something  that  will  "help  a  man  to 
make  a  living."  Here  the  utilitarian  impulse,  good 
always  and  good  only  when  followed  as  subordinate 
to  something  higher — the  making  of  a  good  life — 
comes  in  with  almost  irresistible  sweep.  Of  course 
nine-tenths  of  those  who  go  to  school  must  "make 
a  living."  Of  course  their  education  should  help 
to  this  end.  Of  course  it  is  folly  to  give  them  or 
any  one  else  a  "useless"  training.  Of  course  very 
many  will  be  lucky  to  get  so  much  as  even  a 
"practical"  training.  And  of  course  the  early 
"practical"  training  is  the  best  many  can  take  and 


12  Education  and  Intelligence 

appreciate.  It  is  some  help — perhaps  all  they  can 
get.  And  they  must  have  it.  It  is  their  hard  lot 
not  to  be  able  to  get  or  appreciate  more. 

Full  provision  should  be  made  and  is  rapidly 
being  made  to  supply  what  they  need  and  can  take. 
Yet  so  long  as  it  remains  true  that  "man  shall  not 
live  by  bread  alone,"  all  men,  so  far  as  they  can 
possibly  get  the  chance,  should  be  trained  to  be 
breadwinners — and  something  more.  It  is  this 
"something  more"  which  has  always  measured,  and 
we  may  well  believe  will  always  measure,  the  differ- 
ence between  subjection  and  freedom,  between  the 
man  who  cannot  rise  in  the  intellectual  and  moral 
scale  and  the  man  who  can.  As  a  mere  matter  of 
national  economy,  and  quite  apart  from  its  over- 
whelming moral  importance,  it  "pays"  a  nation  to 
have  as  many  as  possible  of  its  citizens  educated  in 
"something  more"  than  breadwinning.  It  "pays"  to 
have  well-educated  men  in  great  abundance  for  the 
sake  of  order  and  tranquillity,  for  the  increase  of 
national  wealth,  for  the  diminution  of  crime,  for 
the  measureless  material  benefits  which  flow  from 
the  spread  of  intelligence  and  enlightenment.  It 
is  this  "something  more"  which,  in  the  last  analysis, 
makes  the  difference  between  the  higher  and  lower 
forms  of  civilization. 

All  this  is  especially  true  of  our  universities, 
the  very  citadels  of  intelligence,  the  guardians  in 
trust  of  the  higher  intellectual  life  of  our  nation. 
They  are  menaced  now,  as  never  before,  by  the  as- 


Education  and  Intelligence 


saults  of  "practical,"  "vocational"  training— not 
with  the  laudable  view  of  adding  this  to  a  liberal 
education,  but  of  placing  it  side  by  side  in  hostile 
rivalry.  So  far  as  this  has  been  done  it  has  operated 
to  kill  liberal  studies.  The  obvious,  the  particular, 
the  practical,  the  immediately  useful,  have  to  a  large 
extent  driven  out  the  great  studies  of  universal 
value,  the  studies  slowly  acquired,  tonic  to  thought, 
widely  applicable,  life-long  in  their  value  and  in- 
dispensable to  the  highest  civilization.  The  cheaper 
metal  is  driving  out  the  gold.  There  is  something 
intolerant  in  the  movement.  If  it  prevails  our  uni- 
versities will  be  degraded.  They  will  become  some- 
thing else  than  universities,  and  something  inferior. 
It  is  a  new  ignorance  which  is  rising.  That 
there  should  be  ample  place  outside  and  a  place 
inside  universities  for  technical  and  vocational  train- 
ing is  to  be  admitted.  But  the  important  point  in 
this  connection  is  that  the  vocational  training  should 
not  be  placed  in  a  relation  which  destroys  or  even 
menaces  the  liberal  arts  and  sciences — the  very  soul 
of  university  life.  The  movement  is  ignorant  in 
that  it  fails  to  perceive  that  the  relation  of  technical 
to  liberal  studies  in  a  university  is  not  co-ordinate 
but  subordinate.  In  a  university  that  team  must  be 
driven  tandem  and  not  abreast.  Technical  training 
is  particular,  liberal  education  is  universal  in  its 
nature.  And  the  things  of  universal  range  are  the 
supreme  concern  of  a  university.  In  a  university, 
always  and  everywhere,  the  particular  must  be  less 


14  Education  and  Intelligence 


than  the  general,  the  obviously  useful  less  than  the 
permanently  valuable,  and  the  "living"  less  than 
the  whole  life.  The  university  defenders  of  the 
value  of  disinterested  truth  and  knowledge,  of  "wis- 
dom and  understanding"  whose  "price  is  above 
rubies" — and  far  above  all  the  "vocational  values" 
— have  now  no  more  urgent  duty  than  to  expose 
and  resist  this  fundamentally  unintelligent  move- 
ment. At  such  a  time  it  is  most  encouraging  to 
notice  the  resolute  stand  taken  on  this  very  question 
by  so  highly  informed  a  statesman  as  Arthur  Bal- 
four, in  his  address  this  July,  and  the  following 
editorial  comment  thereon  from  the  London  Times: 

"We  often  hear  it  said  that  learning  should 
have  a  practical  purpose;  and  that  sounds  reason- 
able enough  until  we  inquire  what  is  meant  by 
practical.  Then  we  usually  find  that  practical  means 
money-getting.  We  are  told  that  learning  is  only 
valuable  if  it  helps  a  man  in  the  struggle  for  life. 
But  if  that  is  ever  generally  believed,  the  universities 
will  change  their  nature  and  our  civilization  will 
become  only  an  elaborately  organized  barbarism. 
Universities  rose  into  being  and  flourished  in  power 
and  splendor  because  their  business  was  to  help 
not  the  individual  in  his  struggle  for  life  but  the 
world  in  its  effort  to  rise  above  the  struggle  for  life." 
This  is  the  whole  case  in  a  nutshell. 

It  is  well  to  stop  here,  or  other  questions  will 
crowd  in  thick  and  fast  upon  us.  We  return  to 
our  query:  Should  educated  men  be  intelligent?    It 


Education  and  Intelligence  15 


is  not  a  flippant  but  a  serious  inquiry.  It  means 
that  particular  knowledge  is  not  enough;  it  means 
that  general  knowledge  is  needed  also.  It  means 
that  the  highest  intelligence  is  none  too  great  to 
cope  with  the  problems  of  American  education.  It 
means  that  every  man  who  has  "had  an  education" 
should  realize  that  he  ought  to  know  intelligently 
and,  with  growing  experience,  wisely.  It  means 
that  he  ought  to  discard  narrowness,  personal  prej- 
udice, amateur  knowledge,  "half-baked"  impres- 
sions, facile  judgments,  and  to  realize  surely  the 
difference  between  what  he  thinks  he  thinks,  what 
he  thinks  he  knows,  and  what  he  knows  he  knows. 
These  are  the  stages  of  enlightenment  from  mid- 
night to  dawn  to  noon.  And,  above  all,  if  he  is  to 
understand  wisely  any  problem  of  education,  let  him 
not  only  give  time  and  thought  to  it  but  subject  his 
forming  opinions,  without  diffidence  or  arrogance, 
to  the  criticism  of  others.  It  will  save  him  much 
trouble  later.  It  will  reveal  to  him  the  difference 
between  the  small  and  the  great,  the  valuable  and 
the  worthless,  the  illusory  and  the  real,  the  fleeting 
and  the  enduring,  in  his  thought.  It  will  cleanse 
his  mind  and  so  make  it  clearer.  And  as  he  ad- 
vances, ever  thrusting  out  the  structure  of  his 
knowledge  on  larger  lines,  he  begins  to  see  the  size 
and  sweep  of  the  vast  work  of  education,  in  which 
his  own  part  seems  and  is  so  tiny.  It  is  only  then 
he  becomes  able  to  take  the  impersonal  attitude — 
so  much   overwhelmed  by  the   spectacle   of  what 


16  Education  and  Intelligence 


education  means  as  the  progressive  organization  of 
wise,  universal  knowledge,  with  all  its  parts  down 
to  the  least  in  due  order  and  "having  no  part  dark," 
that  he  loses  sight  of  self  and  its  restraining  nar- 
rowness, and  thereby  qualifies  himself  to  observe 
and  know  things  as  an  intelligent  educated  man. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA-LOS  ANGELES 


■^' 


L  007  901  668  9 


ll^ljlf  OUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    001291257 


UCLA-Young  Research   Library 

LB41    .W52 

y 


L  009  618  026  0 


■>m^'^ 


n:^ 


